By Ruth Plumly Thompson
Author of The Wishing Horse of Oz, The Curious Cruise of Captain Santa, "The Wizard of Pumperdink," etc.
Originally published in the Hartford Courant, November 10, 1918.
“I do wish,” grumbled Oliver Elephant, “the other fellows had trunks so I could play cocoanut ball with some one besides the monkeys!”
Uncle Abner Elephant looked up from the Jungle Review and sighed. It was too bad that Oliver Elephant had no big little brothers or sisters to play with and that he was the only little elephant boy in the neighborhood.
“Can’t Tommy Tapir play with you?” he asked mournfully.
“He hasn’t any trunk,” complained Oliver bitterly. “He shoves the cocoanut around with his nose and misses every single throw.”
“Well, why not play with the monkeys?” Uncle Abner wanted to finish his paper in peace.
“The don’t play fair; they run up the trees when they miss and bang me on the head with cocoanuts!” Oliver swung his trunk to and fro in a grieved manner, and Uncle Abner sighed unhappily. As Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Elephant both declared, he spoiled their child to pieces.
Perhaps he did, but then an old bachelor elephant must have something to spoil. Now Uncle Abner reached in his pocket and took out a jungle dime.
“Here, go buy yourself a bag of nuts!”
Oliver brightened up a little at this and started off toward Mr. Brown Bear’s hollow tree shop.
“What makes you so solemn, Oliver?” asked old Uncle Ursus Brown Bear, as he measured out the nuts in a tin cup.
“Nobody to play with!” mumbled Oliver crunching the half dozen nuts in his trunk.
“I’ll play with you!” Johnny Bear bobbed up from behind the counter, but Oliver Elephant only shook his head.
“Too little!” he exclaimed gloomily. “If I’d throw a cocoanut at you it would bowl you over. How could you catch, it, I’d like to know, and then you’d run and tell your ma and she’d tell my ma and what fun would that be?”
So Oliver clumped along crossly chewing nuts and scolding to himself and acting in a way I am ashamed of. That’s the truth. For after all there are lots of things to play besides ball.
Meantime, Uncle Abner Elephant was still worrying.
“Too bad the poor child is so big and all! Too bad!” he muttered, knocking the ashes from his pipe.
Then all at once he gave a whistle and whipping out his penknife he disappeared in the direction of the forest.
When supper time came he rushed in all out of breath with a big package done up in jungle leaves under his arm. No one noticed it. Mr. and Mrs. Oliver were too busy discussing the new Bear family who had just moved into the woods, and Oliver was still sulky.
No one noticed either when Uncle Abner disappeared right after supper nor heard him whistling away for dear life in his room.
Next morning Oliver woke up with the same grieved feeling and with his big cocoanut ball under his trunk came lounging down to breakfast.
He had just about made up his mind to run away to a place where there were more elephant boys and girls.
Breakfast wasn’t quite ready and, as he was determined to have one last meal at home before his big adventure, he went out on the porch to wait.
There in his rocking chair sat Uncle Abner surveying with great pride a set of the finest—well, what do you s’pose?
Tenpins! And each one had a monkey head carved on the top. Oliver had never seen tenpins in his life and he was so surprised that he dropped his ball, which went scurrying down the porch and knocked over eight.
“Fine!” said Uncle Abner.
“Doesn’t this beat playing with live monkeys!”
“See if you can knock ’em all down!”
And Oliver did. They became so interested that Mrs. Oliver Elephant had to drag them in to breakfast. And after that Oliver Elephant played ball by himself and had no end of fun.
But how Uncle Abner came to know about tenpins was this: His half brother had been captured and trained for a circus and one of his special stunts was playing tenpins. In a way which is quite remarkable, but really too long and roundabout to explain, he escaped and returned to the jungle, where he became an authority on many subjects.
I am glad Uncle Abner remembered this game, because I should not have liked Oliver to run away. Should you?
Originally published in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, December 22, 1918.
Merrie Christmas in Supposyville
Over each snow-covered
Highway and hill
Goes the Crier of News
In Supposyville.
Sweet through the stillness
His bell tolls its way,
And his voice is as clear
As the chimes on a sleigh.
“Christmas morning! Awake!
Ye good people, awake!”
Then the bells in the towers
The sweet echo take
And toss it aloft—
Back and forth, to and fro,
And lights twinkle down
On the white sparkling snow.
And then in a breath
All the chimes cease their ringing,
And through the soft air
Comes a sudden sweet singing
Of stately old carols
By voices so young,
It seems that from Heaven
Itself they are flung.
Dear and old fashioned—
But that is the way
Supposyville wakens
On sweet Christmas Day.
Though later with stockings
And feastings and fun
They finish the day
They’ve so quaintly begun.
When I think of the carols,
The bells and the rest,
It seems the beginning
Is sweetest and best!
Copyright © 2026 Eric Shanower and David Maxine. All rights reserved.
